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More Super Mario Galaxy and Smarty Pants
2007-12-02 10:42:00
I'm on holiday at the moment so I've had more time to get stuck into Super Mario Galaxy .I'm still enjoying it immensely - Nintendo has definitely captured the feel of Mario 64.The 2nd player mode is cool, I've had my 3 year old join in for a couple of minutes at a time. She almost has the hang of pointing the remote to pick up stuff - but it doesn't quite engage her yet. However she keeps coming back to try, so I'm hoping she'll get the hang of it.I've waited a long time to be able to play games with my kids, and what a great time to be playing!Another game I'm playing is Smarty Pants , which is a quiz game like Buzz, but for the Wii. Unfortunately for the developers, they've assumed that the PAL territory consists solely of London. Which means that what should be a fun game grinds to a halt when you get the Sport or UK category - and have to answer a question about British soccer players or London suburbs.I went to the options hoping you could turn off these categories...
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Amazon Queen on the iPhone
2007-11-27 12:32:00
I was reading Ron Gilbert's latest amusing blog entry on Grumpy Gamer where he talks about his "one wish".Without ruining it for you he eventually drops the bombshell that Monkey Island is now playable on the iPhone thanks to the nice people at ScummVM.Then it hit me... if Monkey Island works on the iPhone with ScummVM, then Flight of the Amazon Queen would too! And guess what? It does!I was getting an iPhone when they become available in Australia next year anyway, but now being able to play my old adventure game on it makes it even cooler. Oh, and I'll be able to play Monkey Island too.www.passfieldgames.com
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What They Play
2007-11-26 11:08:00
What They Play is a useful new site for parents to help them make educated decisions about what games to buy for their children.Unlike popular sites like IGN, 1Up and Gaming Age, What They Play goes out of their way to talk about games like Dora the Explorer and High School Musical. If you have kids and you're a gamer you'll realize how cool this is - trying to find balanced information on games for 3 year olds is almost impossible.But it also covers games for older kids too, drawing attention to stuff that mainstream press reviews wouldn't - for example their coverage of Assassin's Creed warns:"Potentially objectionable language is far from gratuitous, though it is strong. There are a few f-bombs dropped, and players will hear “b*****d” and expressions such as “d**n you all to h***.”"Founded by industry vets Ira Becker and John Davison (who used to be the editorial director of the 1Up network) the site has the credibility of real game journalists with experience in the...

Super Mario Galaxy
2007-11-21 23:09:00
Without trying to sound too much like a Nintendo fanboy I have to say I've been having a blast playing Super Mario Galaxy on Wii. It's lots of fun and is getting rave reviews from everyone on the planet.Now, the game is awesome, but I would love to see what the reviews would have been like if Mario was retextured as Manny the Carpenter and was released by THQ as Super Manny's Adventures.Would the reviewers mark it down for having text only on the screen and no VO? Would they pick on the bizarre storyline that mixes witches and UFOs and mushrooms into one big mix? Would it get 98% or higher?I guess we'll never know. But I suspect smaller devs would never be given the same sort of breaks in these areas that Nintendo gets.What do you think?www.passfieldgames.com
More About: Mario Galaxy , Super Mario

Brainiversity
2007-11-16 11:28:00
I've been running the closed beta for the new Brainiversity product for the last few months and will be opening it up to the public soon. I've been slowly adding features and fixing bugs - and the public beta should accelerate this process.It's been a great learning process for me - I've gotten my hands dirty with Flash, HTML, PHP and MySQL. I've been having a lot of fun with it - and I'm very impressed with PHP - it's so cool to be able to come up with an idea and have it up and working within minutes. Anyway, keep checking this blog - I'll make the announcement here when it's available.In other news I finally got Zelda on DS but have elected to hold off opening it until Christmas. I know, it sounds like madness - but I have a lot of other cool games to play through first...www.passfieldgames.com

Sam and Max for FREE!
2007-11-12 21:47:00
That's right, Telltale Games is offering one of the episodes of the new episodic adventure game series Sam and Max for free!So, if you haven't got it yet, then click on this link and start downloading the game right now!www.passfieldgames.com
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AnimfxNZ
2007-11-08 22:16:00
Well, I'm back from New Zealand having attending the AnimfxNZ symposium.Unfortunately I had to leave early due to other commitments, so I only got to attend one and a half days of the conference - but the one and half days I did see were great!The conference had an awesome line up of speakers including Tim Johnson (director of Over the Hedge), Dan Curry (vfx producer on Star Trek), Warren Franklin (head of Rainmaker and working on putting Reboot back on the screens!), Rita Street (president of Radar Cartoons), Jason Manley (from Massive Black) and many, many others. Pinky Agnew was the MC and she did an awesome job making everyone laugh and feel welcome. Overall, it was a sterling event!I gave a talk and a workshop which I hope people got something useful from. Wellington was a nice city and I was lucky enough to be there on Guy Fawkes Night - which meant lots of fireworks. Definitely a place to go back and visit with the family.www.passfieldgames.com

OpenSocial
2007-11-02 11:12:00
OpenSocial from Google is a new common API for building social applications across many websites. It's Google's answer to Facebook apps, and given the amount of money that Google is losing in advertising to Facebook's closed off social network it's no surprise they're striking out hard.Google has managed to snare some pretty big partners including LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, hi5 and Friendster. MySpace has actually dumped their own app initiative and adopted OpenSocial.The cool thing is creating a social app is similar to creating a Google Gadget - which means Flash can be embedded. So, what does this mean for game developers? Well, hopefully it will make it easier for entrepreneurial dev teams to do some interesting stuff with social networks and easily deploy their work to a lot of places. In other news, Halloween was awesome. I chaperoned Ella, Zac and our neighbor Regan, around the neighborhood early in the afternoon as they "trick or treated" to their hearts content. E...
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Happy Halloween!
2007-10-30 21:28:00
It's October 31 - and that means it's trick or treat time.This afternoon I'll be escorting Ella and Zac around the neighbourhood as they go trick or treating in search of candy.Ella will dressed in her traditional Halloween costume of a pink fairy. A very cute pink fairy. And Zac will be dressed as a baby boy. A very cute baby boy. And me, I'll be dressed as a game developer (jeans, t-shirt and sneakers). Not a very cute game developer.And because it's Halloween you should check out some of my spooky Halloween themed games!Halloween Spirit Board is a little piece of software I wrote a while back that allows you to talk with those that have "crossed over into the afterlife". (NOTE: This is marketing talk, actual product does not connect with the afterlife and is a simulation).Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage is a cool action platformer full of zombies, monsters and all sorts of Halloween trickery. And it is 100% free!!!!! How good is that?Have an enjoyable day and happy trick...
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48 Hour Games Rock!
2007-10-28 11:47:00
Well the 48 hours are up and the teams have produced some pretty stellar results.I was on the judging panel with Gaute Rasmussen and Lubi Thomas and we were blown away by the quality of work these guys made in the last 48 hours.Check out the blog here, where hopefully they'll add some more info about each game.So congrats to: * Team Equidna and Ben, Abbey, Michael and Kyall on their "Clunk" platformer game. * Lurker's Craft and Adam, Kim, Paul, Phil and Scott on their space game. * Black Van and Nick, Scott, Matthew, Yahtze and Andrew on their "Boltor saviour of the World" game. * Sif90 and Mike, Matt, Michael, Like and Tom on their "Sticky Geckos" puzzle game.A highlight of the night was hearing legendary Yahtzee read the prologue to "Boltor" in his inimitable Zero Punctuation style.Apologies if I missed anyone or got your name wrong - let me know.www.passfieldgames.com
More About: Games , Rock , Hour

48 Hour Game Challenge
2007-10-27 00:23:00
Next Level Brisbane Festival is 3 day event focusing on creative pursuits.As part of the festival there's a 48 hour game challenge running in conjunction with the Brisbane branch of the IGDA. A number of developers are camping out at the QUT campus for 2 days making some cool games that will be judged this Sunday.You can track their progress at the 48 hour game challenge blog here and even send them a few words of encouragement.www.passfieldgames.com
More About: Game , Challenge , Hour , Halle

MySpace Games
2007-10-23 23:03:00
MySpace and Oberon Media are teaming up to bring games to MySpace's social networking site. Should be very interesting to see how other players react to the news. You can find out more in this gamasutra Q&A.In other news, I made it on a "Who's Who in Australian Gaming" list compiled by gameplayer, which is nice. Not sure about being a child prodigy though... I'm all grown up now :-)And finally, if anyone is a big fan of Brainiversity (and loves to do the activities every day) and would like to be in on the beta for a new version, drop me a line at support@casualgamesarcade.com with your name, details and why you'd like to sign up.Cheers,Johnwww.passfieldgames.com
More About: Games , Myspace

The Portal Song
2007-10-19 14:29:00
***SPOILER ALERT***Warning: If you haven't played and finished Portal , part of the Orange Box, then you shouldn't read this blog entry!Okay, you're still reading, so let the spoilers flow.At the end of Portal there's a very cool song called "Still Alive" that plays over the end credits. Jonathon Coulton is the musician behind the song and he talks about writing and recording the song on his blog here.It's a beautiful, ironic, bittersweet song and you can listen to it while watching the end credits here.We need more developers to use great music like this in games. Let's hope Brutal Legend delivers.www.passfieldgames.com
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E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial
2007-10-15 22:17:00
I watched E.T. with my 3 year old this weekend and she loved it. Actually, we watched it a few times - I even dragged out my old E.T. stuffed toy to sit on the couch with us.Afterwards, I was thinking "wouldn't it be cool if there was an E.T. game"... a decent one (not the Atari one!). And what do you know, today I discover that there's a mobile phone version that's just been released.Surely a DS version is not far off?Thanks to Wired Game|Life for the tip off.www.passfieldgames.com
More About: Extra , Terrestrial , Extra-Terrestrial

Brütal Legend
2007-10-14 22:28:00
Tim Schafer and the Double Fine team's new game, Brutal Legend (click here for Wikipedia spoilers), has the cover of the latest Game Informer. What's cool is that it stars one of my favorite rock and rollers Jack Black (from Tenacious D) as a roadie on a road trip from hell, as well as Lemmy from Motorhead.Given Tim's warped sense of humor and Jack Black's awesome voice this is one game I'm getting excited about. If he can capture the coolness of Full Throttle, mix it with the fun of Monkey Island and throw in the humor of Psychonauts we just might have a hit!www.passfieldgames.com

Beam me up, Scotty!
2007-10-13 02:17:00
I thought this was a cool bit of casting:Simon Pegg, star of the TV series Spaced, and co-writer and star of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz has signed on as Scotty in the new J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie.I've been a big fan of Pegg's since his early British TV comedy days, especially Big Train and Spaced - so this should make for a very interesting Trek indeed!www.passfieldgames.com
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Trygames
2007-10-09 21:52:00
Brainiversity has just hit the Trygames network - meaning even more people will be playing the game. I have some cool stuff in the works for the series, so the more people aware of the brand, the better!Trygames has an affiliate program so if you're interested in selling Brainiversity from your site it's pretty easy. Check out their affiliate program here. In the day or so it's been up on Trygames I've already seen some affiliate sales - so it's a great way to make a bit of extra cash.www.passfieldgames.com

Brainiversity Update # 2
2007-10-07 12:31:00
Brainiversity is doing really well from my site at www.brainiversity.com - I've got a 12.7% conversion rate which is great. Most of the people are stumbling on to the site without me having done any real work.Don't worry, I have a marketing plan in place and will be kicking it into gear soon - so hopefully the high conversion rate will stick when way more people come by. I'm just working on a few other little details to make sure the site offers something more to keep people coming back.Hopefully I will have something to show soon.www.passfieldgames.com
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Textfyre - Text Adventures Strike Back
2007-10-03 13:23:00
This was covered on the web a few weeks ago but I thought it was worth pointing out for those who may have missed it...Text fyre is an interactive fiction developer who plans on putting text adventures back in the gaming public eye. Gamasutra ran an interview with founder, David Cornelson last month in which he outlines Textfyre's plans. He plans to initially sell the new titles online, with a view to eventually selling them as boxed packages in Borders and Barnes and Noble. Not a bad idea.I can see his logic in thinking there may be a market for text adventures, given the popularity of Young Reader fiction book titles. I used to love text adventures as a kid and found it really easy to lose myself in their worlds. I wonder if this still applies to kids today? Well, I hope he does well with his venture - I tip my hat to him for trying something different in today's market.If you'd like to read more, Grand Text Auto has some other information here.www.passfieldgames.com
More About: Back , Adventures , Strike , Ventures

Big Brain Academy Board Game
2007-09-29 14:27:00
I thought this was rather interesting... the Nintendo DS game, Big Brain Academy , has been made into a board game by University Game s. It even keeps the gimmick of weighing your brain from the DS game - you earn chips for answering questions and weigh them at the end of the game on the "weigh-o-meter" to see who has the biggest brain.Speaking of video games making the leap to board/card games, the new Halo ActionClix is out now. So when you've finished the fight on the 360 you can get further doses of Halo action sitting around a table with some buddies, a bowl of snacks and some Halo soft drink.Of course Big Brain Academy and Halo aren't the only video games to be made into board games - there are plenty of others including Sid Meier's Civilization, Tomb Raider and my favorite - Doom: The Board Game.I wonder if anyone is up for turning Brainiversity into a board game?www.passfieldgames.com

fl0wer
2007-09-26 13:57:00
fl0wer is the next game from thatgamecompany, the developers behind the entrancing fl0w. I'm not quite sure what the game is all about but you can check out the trailer here. If it's anything like fl0w it will no doubt be a very beautiful, hypnotic experience. It's good to see some interesting stuff in development on the major consoles. The download services that Xbox Live and PSN offer really opens the door for creative projects with smaller budgets. thatgamecompany aren't the only ones producing some interesting results. Echochrome is another game that is pushing boundaries. It's best described as an M.C. Escher puzzle game that you really have to see to appreciate - check out this youtube clip of the game.

Weekend DS Action
2007-09-21 20:24:00
I picked up two DS games this week - Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time and Elite Beat Agents.They're both older games that I somehow managed to miss first time around. But I wanted to play them before the new Zelda hits the DS - a game that I am really looking forward to. No doubt my DS time will be totally consumed by it when it launches in around 3 weeks time!In other news, the whole family is off to Australia Zoo this weekend - Ella is excited about seeing the crocodiles and elephants. Should be a fun day!
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Making Games On A Budget - Part 4
2007-09-18 12:18:00
This is the fourth and final part of the Making Games On A Budget article that I wrote for PC Powerplay, an Australian gaming magazine. I hope you got something out of them!Selling Your GameSo, you made a game. You’ve tested it. People like it. Now what?It’s time to sell it to the world!There are a number of services that will provide digital rights management (DRM) solutions and handle payment transactions for you. Most have no initial set up costs but will charge you a fee for every unit you sell. Trymedia, RegNow and Plimus are just a few options.You can also elect to sell your game via affiliates. These range from big portals to fan web sites and every game you sell you will have to split the profit with the DRM provider and the affiliate - but the upside is you get immense exposure.I chose Trymedia’s ActiveMARK technology for Word Shake and Brainiversity due to its simplicity. Once you sign up it’s a simple process to start selling online. You upload your exe ...
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Making Games On A Budget - Part 3
2007-09-15 22:38:00
This is part three of an article I wrote for PC Powerplay, an Australian gaming magazine. This time I discuss how to produce graphics, sound and beta testing on a budget. The next and final installment is due soon. Enjoy!GraphicsOkay, we’ve got our programming sorted out. Now how do we create graphics on a budget? Luckily there are some inexpensive options available.Photoshop is a great art package, but is probably a bit too expensive for the average hobbyist. For Brainiversity I also used ArtRage 2, which for my below average art skills provided a better result with freehand drawing than Photoshop. The limited edition of ArtRage 2 is free but for USD $19.95 you can get the full edition which lets you use layers.For more pixel perfect art I used a package called Pro Motion. It’s USD $29.95 for the lite version and is great for creating traditional 2D sprite graphics and animation.I also used GIF Movie Gear to create my desktop icons. You can use the free trial version to...
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Making Games On A Budget - Part 2
2007-09-13 21:43:00
This is the second part of an article I wrote for PC Powerplay, an Australian gaming magazine. More to come in the next few days. Enjoy!How To Find TimeBefore I start talking about the development environment and tools, there’s another really important aspect of game development to think about. This is finding time to actually make a game.Chances are indie development is not your full time job, so the key here is to find small slices of time and use that time well. It might mean giving up an hour of TV a night or spending less time in World of Warcraft. Now an hour a day may not seem like a lot of time, but over a week it almost adds up to a full working day. Use the time wisely. Resist the urge to surf the web and get stuck into work as soon as you sit at your PC. If you’ve kept your game small enough you’ll be surprised at how quickly it will start to come together. For a cool tip on how to be more productive check out this article from Life Hacker about Jerry Seinf...
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